The passage that we’re going to be looking at today is found in the tenth chapter of Hebrews. So if you have your copy of God’s Word with you, please open to Hebrews chapter 10. We’re going to be looking at verse 22. We’re going to read the context a little bit and start at verse 19, and we’ll read together through the end of verse 25. Hebrews 10, beginning at verse 19:
19 Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus,
20 by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh,
21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God,
22 let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful;
24 and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds,
25 not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near. (Heb. 10:19–25 NASB)
For many months now we’ve been comparing the features of the old covenant and the new covenant, seeing how over and over again what is given to us in Christ is so much better than what we have under the old covenant. And so much has changed from the Old Testament to the New Testament time. We don’t approach God with animal sacrifices anymore. We don’t approach God through an earthly priest. We don’t have to go to a temple or to an earthly tabernacle to approach God. We don’t have the ceremonies and the high and holy days that they once had under the old covenant. So much of worship has changed. And yet there are some things that have not changed and that never will change.
For instance, God’s nature has not changed. God Himself has not changed. He is still the same God of the Old Testament in the New Testament. His character is no different. His nature is no different. He is still the just One, the eternal One, the righteous One. The same God who slew Nadab and Abihu for their wicked worship at the tabernacle in Leviticus chapter 10 is the same God who killed Ananias and Sapphira for lying in the church in Acts chapter 5. His standards of righteousness have not changed. God’s moral law has not changed. Lying, theft, fornicating, lust, hatred, gossip, slander, idolatry, adultery, greed, covetousness—these things are all still sinful. They all still deserve His eternal wrath. His nature, His righteous indignation toward those sins has not changed. Those things are no less sinful under the new covenant than they were under the old covenant.
And God’s promise to punish evildoers and to slay the wicked, that has not changed. In fact, Revelation 21:8 says, “But as for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” It is Jesus Himself who said that He would raise all men and that those who committed the evil deeds would be raised to a resurrection of judgment (John 5:29). It was Jesus who warned sinners of eternal hell, saying that their worm does not die there and the fire is not quenched (Mark 9:48). It was Jesus who promised that one day to those who do not know Him, He would say, “Depart from me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41). It is Jesus who said that “these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matt. 25:46).
So God’s nature has not changed. His moral law has not changed. His promise to destroy wickedness and evildoers has not changed. And man has not changed. We’re no less sinful today than they were two thousand years ago. In fact, if anything, our technological advancements over the last few decades has only made us able to sin more frequently, more privately, more prolifically, and more profoundly than we ever have had the ability to do in the history of humanity. We are not, with every generation, growing closer and closer to the divine, becoming more and more like God and improving and evolving and improving ourselves morally. That is not happening. Man is just as wicked, just as depraved, as lost, helpless, hopeless, and under the wrath of God as he has ever been since the Fall in the garden. None of that has changed. So if God has not changed and His moral law has not changed and His promise to punish wickedness has not changed and we have not changed, then all of that would bring us to conclude that something else has not changed, and that is that God, because He is holy and righteous and because we are sinful and because His moral law has not changed—God is still concerned with who it is that approaches Him and how it is that we approach Him. That has not changed, either.
Under the old covenant, one of the things that demonstrated the transcendence of God—His separation from sinners—was all of the regulations and all of the details with how man was to approach God. The old covenant taught us that God is very concerned with how He is approached and who approaches Him and when. And even though we under the new covenant have been given through the Person of Jesus Christ open and full and free and complete access to the throne room of God, even though it says in Hebrews chapter 10 we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus Christ through that new and living way, and even though we have a High Priest over the household of God, that does not mean that you and I are free to approach God with any kind of a cavalier attitude or flippantly or without any concern to what goes on in the inner man. There is still in the mind of God and in our approach to God a concern with how it is that we come unto God that is still just as important today as it ever was. And so Hebrews 10:22 says that we are to draw near, and then the rest of that verse tells us how it is that we are to draw near.
We looked last week at the command to draw near. What does that mean, to draw near? How is it that we draw near? How is that a command to unbelievers and to believers, to fence-sitters as well as committed Christians? And today we’re looking at how it is that we are commanded to draw near. Look at the rest of verse 22—and we will get to all of this even though we only got to the first four words last week (“let us draw near”). We’re getting to the rest of this that describes how it is that we are to draw near—“with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”
This describes our approach to God; not only who it is that can approach God, but also how we are to approach Him. And there are three elements of it there: a sincere heart, full assurance of faith, and cleansed from sin. A sincere heart, full assurance of faith, and cleansing from sin. Those things are required of those who would draw near to God in obedience to the command in verse 22. So let’s look at these three things.
First, we draw near with a sincere heart. You’ll notice in verse 22 that the word heart or the idea of heart is mentioned twice. We are to draw near with a sincere heart and with a heart that has been sprinkled clean from an evil conscience. So heart is mentioned twice, because in the mind of God and in the perspective of God, He is not as concerned in the new covenant with the outward externalities of our worship as He is with the inward resolutions and position of the heart. One of the things we noted about the Old Testament priesthood was that a priest was never disqualified because of the impiousness of his heart. As long as a priest wore outwardly all the right garments and he did all of the right actions, he could be the most wicked person in the world in his heart and still he could perform the commands of divine worship in the tabernacle. That was not a concern. But under the new covenant, God is concerned with the heart. He was concerned with the heart under the old covenant, but in terms of the priesthood, the functioning of the priesthood had nothing to do with the attitude or the posture of the heart. Under the new covenant, it’s entirely different. Under the new covenant, God is concerned that we approach Him with a sincere heart and a heart that is sprinkled clean from an evil conscience.
The word sincere here is a word that is a translation of the Greek word the author uses, which comes from a group of words that describes it as related to the word for “truth” or for “true.” This word literally means a true or genuine or a sincere heart since it describes that which is not false or shallow, that which is not pretentious or hypocritical or superficial. It is genuine. What meets the eye is that which it is in truth. It is without pretensions, without kind of a superficial veneer that is over something that makes it look like it is not really what it is in truth. That’s the idea. It’s sincere or it’s genuine. It is—it appears as it actually is. That’s the idea behind sincerity here. It describes that which is not characterized by ulterior motives or hidden pretensions or a fakeness. It is not duplicitous. It’s true, genuine, and sincere.
And a great example of an insincere heart—to give you a negative example—is Simon the sorcerer in Acts chapter 8. Do you remember that story when Philip went about preaching in Samaria and the Samaritans started to get saved, and one guy who got—who had believed (he wasn’t actually saved)—one guy who’d believed was Simon the sorcerer. Now he was well-known in the area because he was a magician. He was into the magic arts, and he was known for these demonstrations. He knew his share of tricks and illusions and magic tricks and all of that. And so then the disciples, Peter and John, went down to Samaria to certify the salvation of those Samaritan believers and to lay hands upon them. And then when he—when they laid hands on the Samaritan Christians, they received the Holy Spirit. And Simon saw this and he thought, wow, if I could have that power, to give the Holy Spirit to the person on whom I lay my hands, I could make some bank with that. I could make some coin in my spare time by just laying hands upon people and giving them this ability. So Acts chapter 8 says,
18 Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was bestowed through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money,
19 saying, “Give this authority to me as well, so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”
20 But Peter said to him, “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money!
21 You have no part or portion in this matter, for your heart is not right before God.
22 Therefore repent of this wickedness of yours, and pray the Lord that, if possible, the intention of your heart may be forgiven you.
23 For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bondage of iniquity.” (Acts 8:18–23 NASB)
Simon had supposedly believed; he had made a profession of faith and began to follow the ministry of Peter, but once he offered Peter money for that ability to lay hands on people and give them the Holy Spirit, it demonstrated that his heart was not what he made it out to be. It was not genuine belief. Peter said, “I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bondage [still in slavery to your] . . . iniquity” (v. 23). He had never been set free from his sin. And yet Simon followed Philip around, and then eventually Peter and John, professing to be a Christian, appearing to be a Christian, but in reality he was not. He was not a genuine believer.
God is interested in the heart and He sees the heart, and God knows the hearts of all men. It was back in Hebrews chapter 4 where we read in verse 13, “There is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” He sees every last thing. Every motive, every intention, every wicked thought, every vain imagination, every word we want to say but didn’t have an opportunity to say, He knows that. He knows every pretension of my heart, every self-deception, everything that I try and make look as if it’s true that is, in fact, not actually true. God sees it all, and He knows us perfectly.
In fact, God knows your heart better than you do. See, how is that possible? Ask yourself this question. Do you think there is any man or woman alive or who was ever alive—except for the Lord Jesus Christ, of course—any man or woman alive who knows perfectly the condition of their heart and every motive they have ever had? Is that even possible? Is it even possible for you to know the secret motive and the depth of the secret motive that you have at any given moment? In order for it to be possible for you to know your heart the way God knows it, you would have to be perfectly wise, infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely judicious, perfectly righteous, and you would have to know everything about you that there is to know and to know it truthfully and perfectly without error or flaw.
So is it even possible for you to know the condition of your own heart? It’s not. In fact, our heart has the ability to deceive us. Jeremiah 17:9 says the heart is more deceitful than anything else. More deceitful than the devil. More deceitful than a politician; I know, it’s hard to believe. But your heart is more deceitful than anybody who works or lives in Washington, DC. That’s tough to swallow, but it is true. Your heart is more deceitful than anything else, and desperately wicked, the prophet says. And then the prophet asks, “Who can know it?”
Who can know your own heart? Who can know the heart of man? Can anybody know the heart of man? Can you know perfectly your every motive, your every thought, your every measure of sincerity? Can you know perfectly the depths and the ability of your own heart to deceive you and to trick you and to make you think that something is true when in fact it is not? Can any man know that? the prophet asked. Then the Lord answers that in the very next verse, verse 10, right after that. “I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways.” The Lord does know it. Who knows the heart of man in the depths of its wickedness? And God says, I know it, and I know it perfectly, and I know it infinitely, and I know it as it is in truth.
Now that should do to you two things. Number one, it should terrify you. It should terrify you to know that the Lord Himself—before His eyes we are an open book, and there is nothing hidden from His sight. Nothing. Not a motive, not a deed, not a thought, not a judgment, not even our own self-deception is hidden from Him. He knows it all. He is righteous, and He is just, and there is a day of reckoning. And if you are not hidden in Jesus Christ on that day—all of the secret motives of men’s hearts will be revealed, and it will all be exposed, and there will be a day of reckoning even for every idle word we have spoken and every thoughtless deed we have done and for every motive that we have hatched in the deep dark recesses of our own infinitely deceptive heart. If you’re not in Jesus Christ, all of that will be exposed. And that should terrify you.
But second, it should comfort you. And you know why? Because the Lord knows everything about you and yet He loves you. And He knows everything about you and yet He chose you. And He knows everything about your heart and yet He sent His Son to die for you and for that sin. And so that means that there is never a point in your life, ever, where the Lord will discover something about you in the recesses of your heart that will change the way He feels about you. Never. That can never happen because the Lord can never discover anything. He will never learn anything about you, anything about a motive, anything about a thought, anything about anything you have ever done. The Lord will never learn anything that will change what He has decreed and determined concerning you, and that is that in Jesus Christ, because of what Christ has done and because by virtue of the faith which He has granted to you, you are justified and declared righteous and that can never change. Because at no point will the Lord ever say of you, “Man, I didn’t know that was down in there. And now it just came out of him like that, and now we need to have a reevaluation of whether or not you belong in My family.” The Lord will never say that and He can never say that because He can never discover anything new about you. So that is at the same time a terrifying thing—that the Lord knows everything about me—and a very comforting thing—that the Lord knows everything about me. I rest in that. God’s omniscience is both terrifying and comforting. So there is nothing that He will ever learn that will change what He has determined concerning you.
Now here’s the big question. I am commanded and you are commanded to draw near to God. And we are commanded to draw near to God with a sincere, true heart. And yet my heart has the ability to deceive me. And if my heart has the ability to deceive me, doesn’t my heart have the ability to deceive me into thinking I have a sincere heart when I don’t have a sincere heart? Right? You didn’t think we were getting down into 3D chess today, did you? Does my heart—if it has the ability to deceive me, doesn’t it have the ability to deceive me about whether or not I am deceived? And doesn’t it have the ability to deceive me about whether or not I am coming to the Lord in sincerity? Maybe I’m approaching God thinking I’m sincere, but my heart is tricking me into thinking that I’m sincere when in fact I’m not sincere, and I’m insincere. But I don’t know that I’m insincere because my heart is tricking me into thinking that I’m sincere. And yet I would approach God—this is really horrible, isn’t it?—and yet I would approach God anyway without sincerity of heart. How do we wrestle through that?
Though perfect knowledge of ourselves is not possible, that doesn’t mean that no knowledge of ourselves is possible. Just because I cannot know perfectly the condition of my own heart does not mean that I cannot know anything about the condition of my own heart. And part of having a sincere heart is at least having a heart that approaches the Lord and says before the Lord, “As far as I know, there’s nothing insincere or disingenuous in this, Lord. And I am coming to you not knowingly or willingly putting up pretensions or a veneer, but I am coming to you, Lord, honestly, even recognizing that my heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” Because if I come to the Lord confessing my heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, that is a sincere heart. Because I’m not coming to the Lord saying, “No, my heart’s not deceitful and desperately wicked.” Because if I come to the Lord and I confess to Him that my heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, and I’m seeking from the Lord a remedy for that heart condition, that in itself is sincerity, because that is coming to the Lord with a true and sincere heart. “Lord, You know it all. This is all that I know about me. As far as I know, I’m not being insincere or pretentious or duplicitous. I’m not trying to deceive You, but, Lord, I recognize that my heart is deceitful and I need Your grace to remedy that situation.” Just because I cannot know everything about my heart does not mean that I cannot know anything about my heart. And if I can come to the Lord with a heart that is genuinely open before Him and truthful and honest, even if my heart is deceitful, that is still in itself a sincere heart. That is a sincere heart.
Now notice that we’re not told to come to God or to draw near to God with a perfect heart. If you waited until your heart was perfect, how long would you wait? Would you wait awhile? Next week? Next month? How long would you take to draw near to God if the text said “Draw near to God with a perfect heart”? We’re not commanded to draw near to God with a perfect heart, but we are commanded to draw near to God with a sincere heart or a true heart. That is a heart that is not putting up any pretensions around the inner man. To know my own faults and my own sins and my own propensities and even my own heart’s desire and ability to deceive me, to recognize that and to come to God anyway is to come to Him in sincerity and truthfulness. Because it doesn’t have to be perfect; it needs to be sincere. And knowing the condition of your own heart and its ability to deceive you is in fact a mark of a sincere heart. So don’t let that keep you away. Because we’re not commanded to come to the Lord in perfection. It is to be without hypocrisy or superficiality, without self-deception and pretension. And to do this requires some self-examination of ourselves.
You can see why it is that David prayed in Psalm 51, “You desire truth in the innermost being . . . Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me” (vv. 6, 10). Psalm 51:16: “For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; You are not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.” That’s what the Lord is after, that sincerity of heart.
One of the marks of a sincere heart is also the full assurance of faith. Notice [Hebrews chapter 10] verse 22: “Let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith.” That’s the second mark. Faith is a necessary requirement to draw near to God. Without faith, that is to be a double-minded man, or to be uncertain, or to doubt, or to have reservations, or to come to God with anything other than a full confidence in who He is and that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. To come to God on any other terms or in any other way but without full assurance of faith is to come to God with insincerity. It’s to come to God and say, “Well, I kind of hope You might exist. And so I’m going to . . . Here I am! And I don’t know if You’re going to be good to me. I don’t know that Your Word is true. I don’t know if You have the ability to hear me or even want to hear from me.” All of those are marks of an insincere heart. But when we come to God with full assurance of faith, it means that we come to God in the words of Hebrews 11:6, knowing that He is, believing that He is, and believing that He is a rewarder of those who will diligently seek Him. That is full assurance of faith.
Now let me contrast the biblical idea of faith with the world’s idea of faith. The world, when it describes faith or speaks of faith, a lot of times those who are in the world—secularists—they think that what we mean by faith is a vague feeling. Kind of like, you know, things are not going all that well, but I just, I kind of get this sense. I kind of get this feeling that things are going to turn out right. I guess that’s what faith is, right? It’s just kind of a vague sense that something might be true or might be happening or might be right. That’s not faith. We don’t mean a vague feeling. We don’t mean believing something that is contrary to truth, something that’s irrational or illogical. That’s not what we’re describing. We’re not describing a blind faith. We’re not describing believing something that we have no reason to believe is true or believing something that we hope to be true contrary to facts. None of those things are true and genuine biblical faith. That might be what the world means when they speak of faith, a vague feeling, wish-casting, hoping something is true, or even believing in something irrational, apart from the facts, that is unscientific and unbelievable, but we believe it anyway, and we talk ourselves into believing it. That’s what the world means by faith, but that is not what the Bible means by faith, and that is not what we as Christians mean by faith.
When we speak of having a full assurance of faith, we’re not talking about wish-casting or hoping that something is true. We’re talking about a resolute trust that we place in something that we have every reason to believe is true. Biblical faith is trusting what we know to be true. That’s biblical faith. So when the Bible talks about having faith in something or believing or trusting in God or having faith in God, it’s not saying just hope that He exists or wish that He exists. And it’s not saying that Jesus is the odds-on favorite. Instead, it is a confident trust in what we have every reason to believe is true. And Scripture holds God out to be the object of that faith and trust because God is faithful and God is true and God exists and He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
God is presented in Scripture as the ultimate object of that believing faith because He is the ultimate truth and He is the ultimate true One. So faith is not just hoping or wish-casting. It is a trust, a belief in something we have every reason to believe is actually true. This is why He uses the words full assurance. I want you to consider the argument of the book of Hebrews, for instance. We get here, we’re almost right in the cusp of the faith chapter, Hebrews chapter 11. We’re right about ready to talk about all these examples of faith in Hebrews chapter 11. But I want you to consider the argument of the author of Hebrews all the way up and to this point. What does he say?
Beginning back in chapter 2, he argued that Jesus Christ, who is revealed in the Old Testament—that’s chapter 1 and all of the Psalms that he quotes in chapter 1—that Jesus actually appeared in history, and in that coming of Christ, He gave to us His apostles. Those apostles gave to us the revelation of Jesus Christ and performed miracles. So he has argued from the eyewitness testimony of the apostles that Jesus Christ is true and that He is a worthy object of our faith. Then he argued from the Old Testament revelation, quoting psalm after psalm to show that the Old Testament promised not only the coming of the Messiah, but the dying of the Messiah, the rising of the Messiah, the ascending of the Messiah, and the Messiah taking His seat at the Father’s right hand. And he quotes from Psalm 110:1 where the Lord said to our Lord, ”Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.” And he has argued from all of the Old Testament revelation that this Jesus in whom we are to place our faith is none other than the One who has fulfilled all of those Old Testament scriptures.
And then he has made the argument from the symbols of the Old Testament, citing all of the pictures and the symbols and the types and the shadows of Christ all the way through the Old Testament, pointing out that the sacrifices and the incense, the tabernacle, the ark, the priest, the priesthood, the animals, the celebratory days like the Sabbath (Hebrews chapter 4), the day of atonement, all of that was fulfilled in the Person of Jesus Christ. And then he has argued from all of the characters of the Old Testament, Melchizedek and Abraham and Moses and Joshua, citing all of those men, showing that those men expected this Messiah to come. So by the time we get to Hebrews chapter 10, the author has argued from the historical record of the apostles and what is in the Old Testament and the New Testament. He has argued from the Old Testament Scriptures, which have been given and then fulfilled. He has argued from all of the Old Testament characters who anticipated and looked forward to this Messiah. And then he has argued from the types and the shadows of the Old Testament itself to show that Jesus Christ is greater than all of these and that this One who has come has fulfilled all of those types and shadows.
So by the time we get to Hebrews chapter 10, and he says to us that we ought to draw near to God with full assurance of faith, what has he argued? By the time we get to Hebrews chapter 10, he is essentially saying to us that you have no reason for your unbelief, you have no reason to turn away from this. This Jesus that I proclaim to you is the fulfillment of all the Old Testament scriptures, all the Old Testament types and shadows, all the Old Testament characters. Everything from the old covenant is fulfilled in Him. The author is not asking us to place our faith in some rando Jewish carpenter who lived up in Nazareth and spent his days in a carpenter’s shop. He is asking us, he is commanding us, he is demanding us to place our faith in this One who came and fulfilled everything revealed before Him, fulfilled all the types and shadows so that when we get to Hebrews chapter 10 we can say that you and I can have full assurance of faith, absolute confidence in the certainty of this message and in the certainty of this salvation, in the certainty of this work of this divine Son. Does that sound like wish-casting to you? “Hey, there’s some Jewish man, just believe on Him, abandon the sacrifices, go believe on that Jewish guy, you know, the one that died on a cross.” This is not wishful thinking. We don’t place our faith in a Jesus who’s just the odds-on favorite. We’re not asked to place our faith in Jesus and just hope that these things are true. “This seems like a really good idea. I’m going to believe this stuff.” No, the author is saying, with all of this evidence, with all of this argument, draw near to God with a sincere heart in absolute certainty of faith.
The world thinks you can’t be certain about anything that you have faith in. Right? That’s how the world thinks. Yeah, either you’re certain and know that something is true, or you just have faith that something is true. They think these things are mutually exclusive. Our argument is not even close to that. We are saying we have placed our trust—and our faith—in what we know for certain is true. So we approach God with a full assurance of faith. That word full assurance means to be absolutely sure, completely certain about something. So my faith and hope in Christ—your faith and hope in Christ—we’re not just hoping that these things are true. We’re not rolling the dice. We’re believing something that we have every reason to believe is true. We draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith.
Now look at this third quality. “Having our heart sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water” (Heb. 10:22). Now that sounds a little odd to us, doesn’t it? We are to draw near to God with a sincere faith in full assurance of faith, having our heart sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies—that sounds very physical; I mean, we can understand how it might be that our hearts would be sprinkled clean—our bodies washed with pure water? What is the author referring to there? It almost sounds like a ceremonial cleansing. It almost sounds like taking a bath, washing your body, as if this makes you able to approach God.
Some people have suggested that this is a reference to baptism. Maybe that’s in some of your heads. I do not think that this is a reference to baptism, but I will give you what I think is the most convincing argument offered by those who say that this is a reference to baptism. So even though I would reject this, this, I think, is the most convincing argument that they would offer in saying that this—washing your body with pure water—refers to baptism, OK? They would say that the phrase at the end of verse 22—look at it in your Bible—that that phrase “our bodies washed with pure water” belongs with verse 23 and not with the command to draw near in verse 22. So therefore, they would say that it ought to be read this way: “Let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience. And having our bodies washed with pure water, let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.” So they would take that last phrase—“our bodies washed with pure water”—and they would connect it to holding fast with the profession of faith in verse 23.
Why would they do that? Well, what is baptism? Baptism is something we do in obedience to the command of Christ. We are baptized because He said go into the world and baptize believers. And the example in the New Testament is that those who have made a profession of faith in Christ, they follow the Lord in believer’s baptism. Well, what are we doing in baptism? We are professing—declaring—in front of the whole world that I belong to Christ and that my hope is in Heaven and that because of what Christ did on my behalf, I am given eternal life, my sins are forgiven, and I will spend eternity with Him because He belongs to me and I belong to Him. That is what you are openly professing. That is what baptism is. Baptism is an outward declaration of an inward commitment that we have made.
Well, with that in view, read verse 23 and the end of verse 22: “And our bodies washed with pure water [that is, having been baptized]. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope [that hope which we profess in baptism; let us hold fast to that confession, the baptism confession we have made] without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.” So they would say that the end of verse 22 belongs with verse 23, the second command, the second “let us”—“let us hold fast.”
Now that, I think, is the most convincing argument. I’m not convinced by it, even though I do say it is a convincing argument. I think it’s the best textual argument you could offer for saying that that’s baptism. I don’t think it’s baptism. I think that there’s a better way of understanding it and that is this. Well, before I say that, understand that that’s not a heretical understanding if somebody says this refers to baptism. That’s not heretical because they’re not suggesting that baptism is necessary for salvation. They’re simply saying that he’s asking those who have been baptized to hold fast to the confession that they have made in that baptism statement. That’s all that they would say the author is saying. That’s not a heretical belief, but I don’t think it is the best take on the passage.
Here, I think, is the best take on the passage. I would suggest that the phrase, “having our bodies washed with pure water” is a reference to the same kind of cleansing mentioned earlier in verse 22: “having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience.” And the author is doing here something that he has done throughout the book of Hebrews. He’s done it so often you can almost spot it now. He is taking an Old Testament picture and he is drawing a New Testament parallel to it. An Old Testament picture and he is drawing a New Testament parallel. So he is speaking in the language that a Jew would understand, a Jew who was familiar with the old covenant ceremonies. And he is describing here a New Testament—a new covenant—reality in terms that would have been familiar with those who are familiar with the signs and the pictures of the old covenant.
So what is the sign or the picture of the old covenant that is being described here? A priest, before he could approach God, either on a holy day or in doing any of the functions of the tabernacle, had to wash his body with pure water. So for instance, we read in Leviticus chapter 16 concerning the Day of Atonement in Yom Kippur—Leviticus 16:4: “He [that is speaking of the priest] shall put on the holy linen tunic, and the linen undergarments shall be next to his body, and he shall be girded with the linen sash and attired with the linen turban (these are holy garments). Then he shall bathe his body in water and put them on.” So anyway, there was a laver that was outside of the tabernacle itself, out in the courtyard, and a priest was to bathe himself in that water, washing himself before he put on the holy garments, and then went about his priestly duties. There was a ceremonial outward cleansing that was a symbol or a sign of something. And the priest had to do that—the high priest had to do that—before any of his functions on the Day of Atonement. But it was also true that an ordinary priest who just went into the tabernacle to change the showbread or to put coals on the altar of incense or to trim the wicks on the lampstand—that’s the word I was thinking of a couple weeks ago—to trim the wicks on the lampstand inside the tabernacle, that priest, before he went into the tabernacle to do any of those functions, also had to bathe with water. So we read in Exodus 30:18,
18 You shall also make a laver of bronze, with its base of bronze, for washing; and you shall put it between the tent of meeting and the altar, and you shall put water in it.
19 Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet from it;
20 when they enter the tent of meeting, they shall wash with water, so that they will not die [you hear that? They had to wash with water so that they would not die]; or when they approach the altar to minister, by offering up in smoke a fire sacrifice to the Lord.
21 So they shall wash their hands and their feet, so that they will not die; and it shall be a perpetual statute for them, for Aaron and his descendants throughout their generations. (Exod. 30:18–21)
So, a priest could not come near to God without two things. Number one, the sprinkling of sacrificial blood which symbolized the payment for sin and the removal of guilt. And second, the washing with water, which symbolized the removal of the defilement of sin, the impurity of sin. Those were the two symbols, the sprinkling of blood and the pouring out or the washing of water. They had to have those two symbols, one symbolizing the removal of their guilt, the other symbolizing the removal of their defilement. In other words, sin had to be dealt with not only in its guilt, but also in its impurity and its defiling effect. And no priest could approach the Lord in any capacity to do any function within the tabernacle without first having that taken care of, without the guilt being removed and without the defilement being removed. And what accomplished that? The sprinkling of blood and the washing of water.
So what is the author saying here? We are to draw near, but remember the Old Testament priests who first had to have their sin removed and then the defiling effect of sin taken care of in washing the body. Similarly it is with Jesus. You and I cannot approach God without a sacrifice that makes a way into His presence possible. So unless the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is applied to you and the merits of what He has accomplished in that work, if they do not belong to you, you cannot approach God.
An unbeliever cannot come and approach God on any terms because he has no warrant, he has no path, he has no means. That unbeliever cannot draw nigh unto God because there is no sacrifice that has been made for his sin. He must first come to Christ and by virtue of his repentance and his faith, then his guilt is removed, then he is cleansed from the defiling effects of sin because his heart is sprinkled clean from an evil conscience. Then that sinner, though he is still in a sinning state, having been declared righteous, that sinner can draw nigh unto God. Why? Because the guilt of sin has been removed and the defilement of sin has been removed. But that comes through Jesus Christ. So we are to draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having been cleansed from our sin.
If you have not been cleansed from your sin, you have no warrant to draw nigh unto God. You have no ability. You must have your sin removed. The Old Testament priest, if he tried to come unto God’s presence without the blood of a sacrifice and the washing from defilement, God would kill him. That was a picture of something. You can’t draw nigh unto God on your own terms. He’s the offended one; you’re the offending party. You want to draw nigh unto Him? You draw nigh on His terms. What are His terms? Through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. He has inaugurated for us by His blood a new and living way through the veil, that is, His flesh (Heb. 10:20). That is how we draw nigh unto Him; with a sincere heart, in full assurance of faith, having been cleansed from sin. You don’t have those things, don’t draw nigh unto God. That is the attitude. That is the posture of one who must draw nigh unto God. Full assurance of faith, sincere heart, being cleansed from sin.
What does it mean at the end of verse 22—or I should say the middle of verse 22—that our hearts are sprinkled clean from an evil conscience? Does that mean the conscience is evil? Our conscience is not evil. It does a great work. It tells us when something is wrong, tells us when we’ve done something wrong. But from the perspective of those who feel the pangs of conscience, that conscience is doing an evil work on us, isn’t it? It’s pointing out our evil. It’s making us to realize our evil. It’s demonstrating our evil. It reminds us that we’ve committed evil deeds. And in that sense, the conscience convicting us of the evil that we have done is doing to us something that we feel or we sense is like evil.
Well, Jesus Christ, because of what He has done—He has sprinkled our hearts clean from an evil conscience. If you’re in Jesus Christ, there is no reason for your conscience to continually torment you about sins you have done in the past that you know are forgiven and covered by the blood of Jesus Christ. If you have been justified and declared righteous, then your conscience has been cleansed by Jesus Christ, and the only one bringing up those sins between you and God is you. Because God’s act of justifying you means that He will never in the future bring up any sin that you have committed, because those sins do not govern or determine or affect His relationship with you or how He feels about you. If you are justified in His Son, He has determined to think of you as if you are righteous and to attribute to you none of your sins and to credit to you only and solely and infinitely the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And if that’s true, you have had your heart sprinkled clean from an evil conscience. This is the glory of what is provided for us in the gospel, that not only is the guilt of our sin removed and not only is the defilement of our sin removed but the weighting effects of our sin are removed in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
So we can be forgiven, we can know we’re forgiven, and we can approach God as if we are forgiven all because of what Christ has done. So now when we approach Him, we approach God daily and we confess our sin, we confess our need, we confess to Him that we need the grace to remedy the sin that still remains in us. And we do so in this constant state of humility and repentance and faith and pleading for grace, not because we want to live under the oppressive guilt of an evil conscience, but we do so because we live in the light of the glorious justification that we have in Him because of what He has done on the cross for us. Two totally different things.